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Meaningless Senate Vote Offers A Cheap, Bitter Sort Of Hope For The Unemployed

CNN recently reported that members of our broke-ass Senate managed to put down their health insurance lobbyist-provided crack pipes just long enough to succeed in a bi-partisan vote in favor of pushing forward a bill designed to create jobs for people who actually need a bailout: Us.

But, before you pay up on that bet you made that the government doesn't care about us, I've got some good news (or bad news, depending on how you look at it): You haven't lost that bet after all.

See, the $15B bill is a sickly, pathetic shadow of the original $85B draft, and, moreover, the vote was only  "bi-partisan" in that a handful of Republicans (five, to be exact) went the way of the Democrat majority only in a procedural sense: The vote simply moves the bill forward, toward actually being voted on.

Condescending Conservative Condescends Liberal Condescencion...Pointlessly

Gerard Alexander's recent piece for the Washington Post —"Why are liberals so condescending?" — is either an experiment in irony or merely proof that he is a rather academic type of moron. Even if you ignore his annoyingly-posh coupling of two rather-snooty names, his essay on liberal condescension comes off as, well, condescending.

If you've seen Team America: World Police then you'll understand me when I tell you that Alexander's essay asking Why is everyone so fucking stupid? is a rant based on the same quality of facts as Kim Jong Il's ramblings.

Alexander's point? The majority of conservatives pick the political high road while liberals snipe at them from positions of prejudice and narrow-mindedness.

Super Bowl To Feature Only Some Kinds Of Man-On-Man Action

This Sunday, CBS will broadcast a lengthy event featuring lots of strong, sweaty men grappling and wrestling each other to the ground, all in an effort to grab balls and plow through the other guys' back field. Meanwhile, large-breasted women in skimpy skirts and low-cut shirts will jump up and down enthusiastically in an effort to make the whole affair seem less homoerotic so that the majority of men watching will not wonder if they should be questioning their sexuality.

This year's Super Bowl will continue a long tradition of pitting millionaire athletes against one another in their quest to make more money and win some jewelry (a big sparkly ring, to be exact). It will also help the Department of Education meet its quota for exposing hillbillies to Roman numerals once per year.

And that's not all.

Pro-Life (Anti-Choice) Superbowl Ad Straddles Offensive Line

Many times it's been said that we're a lot like the Romans of old.  And it's true, really.  They had their bread and circus; we have Doritos and Bud Light.  They sometimes had corrupt Senates and demented, reckless leaders; ditto here.  And as they loved to blow their money watching gladiators butcher each other, we get our kicks watching guys in helmets and pads wrestle and grope each other on account of an oddly-shaped ball.

Only I don't think that the businessmen of the Old World spent staggering sums so that they could disrupt the combat with ads for their latest sport-utility chariot.  One of the big consequences of being part of a large, consumer-driven economy is that, as a general rule, the more you want to see something, the more advertising you'll have to suffer through.  In the case of a sports event, you can often watch ten minutes of ads with occasional cuts back to the "action," where action is composed largely of a series of timeouts, false starts, and coaches arguing with referees as if it's going to serve any purpose other than to further stall the game.

So ... Why the fuck do people watch sports?

It's just another of those great mysteries of life, like where all those missing socks go or how babies are made (no one has been able to give me a serious, non-sexual explanation of that one yet).  But mysterious or not, the influence of sporting events on daily life cannot be denied.  So great is the potential of those gaps in the "action" that the television network can carve them up into thirty-second increments and try to sell each one for between 2-3Million dollars.  The real crazy part is that people actually buy this time.  Companies producing all sorts of stuff turn into ravenous beasts, gobbling up ad spots in hopes of getting us to gobble up their beer, cola, cars, and stock investment strategies.

(For those of you wondering when I'll get to my point, I'm just now arriving at it.)

Pat Robertson: Haitians Made A Pact With Me Hundreds Of Years Ago (Video)

Right now, members of the media are abuzz over Pat Robertson's claim that the earthquake in Haiti is the latest evidence that that nation is cursed.  As quoted at thinkprogress.org, Robertson states:

Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. Napoleon the Third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you get us free from the prince.' True story. And so the devil said, 'OK, it’s a deal.' They kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free.

But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other ...

Cool story, bro. 

Robertson's particularly eloquent when he says things like "Napoleon the Third and whatever." But I especially love how every time he says, "True story," it becomes more apparent that the "Jerry Springer Show" show saves more American souls than "The 700 Club."

Joy Behar wonders just how Pat Robertson knows that the Haitians made that pact with Satan. But I don't wonder. I've known for many years that Pat Robertson is, in fact, the Prince of Darkness. That's right. Pat Robertson (not Ozzy Osbourne) is the Devil. So, if Haiti made that pact, he'd be the one to know about it.

Allow me to explain.

Man With World's Largest Penis Scoffs Destiny, Can't Find Job (Video)

Imagine for a moment a world in which a boy named Albert Einstein declared, "Fuck science!  I'm going to be a famous athlete.  Nerds don't get taken seriously.  But athletes? They're the ones swimming in poon!"

Seems wrong, doesn't it?  A brilliant mind, destined for academic greatness, denied its ultimate purpose because its possessor would rather pursue his own whims than embrace the magnificent destiny that was laid at his feet by Providence (and I don't mean the one in Rhode Island).

That would be outrageous!

(For those of you who jumped on this article because you saw the word "penis" in the title, don't worry — I'm getting to that.)

Well, if the image of Albert Einstein as a linebacker for, let's say, the Oakland Raiders seems absurd to you, so should the curious case of Jonah Falcon.

Falcon is five feet, nine inches tall.  By all accounts, he's physically an average 39-year-old, except for one not-so-tiny detail — he's packing 13.5 inches of meaty man torpedo.

Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Bullshit Spending Can Stop This Monopoly

The recession has taken a lot of heat over the past year.  It's been blamed for rising unemployment, tightening credit, falling profits, rising losses, and just about every other problem we've got right now.  The recession, in turn, has been blamed on greedy corporations, villainous executives, conservatives lifting regulations, liberals taxing and spending, American unionized labor, Chinese slave labor — the list goes on and on. 

Enough! If you're going to play the blame game, you may as well point your finger at the real cause. Riddle me this: What do partisan politics, corporate negligence, and excessive government spending all have in common?

If you guessed "stupidity," you're close.  The answer is, unforgivably mind-boggling levels of gross incompetence and carelessness coupled with bucketfuls of shit for brains!

Can you blame a single person or entity for the massive problems dragging down our society?  Of course not.  But certain individuals and organizations make prime examples of the kind of careless, moronic activity that I'm talking about.

Take the United States Postal Service.  It's got a sweet ass deal, doesn't it?  Imagine being a private organization with a total monopoly, only it's completely fucking legal.  Anti-trust laws?  Fuck 'em.  You're the USPS and you don't take shit from nobody.  You've been given free license to handle all postal correspondence for one of the most populous countries in the world, and as long as you don't turn a profit (or at least, if no one notices you doing so), you can do it however you'd like. 

Great opportunity, right?  Sure, if you define "opportunity" as a chance to take the biggest possible market advantage and completely fuck it up.

As CNN reported in an article just a few weeks ago, the USPS's inspector general revealed that the agency managed to blow an entirely-unnecessary $792,022 in five months.  It should then come as no surprise that it lost $3.8 billion dollars in the last year.  If you don't feel like caring because that spending pales in comparison to the organization's overall loss, consider these two points:

Can't Pay Taxes? Learn from Citigroup!

The IRS has found a new way to give me a catastrophic aneurysm.  As the Washington Post reports:

The federal government quietly agreed to forgo billions of dollars in potential tax payments from Citigroup as part of the deal announced this week to wean the company from the massive taxpayer bailout that helped it survive the financial crisis.

The Internal Revenue Service on Friday issued an exception to long-standing tax rules for the benefit of Citigroup and a few other companies partially owned by the government. As a result, Citigroup will be allowed to retain billions of dollars worth of tax breaks that otherwise would decline in value when the government sells its stake to private investors.

Motherfuckers.  So, before my head explodes, let me get this straight: we made an exception to the fundamental rules of our free market and gave a failing business lots of our money, cheap.  Then we made another exception to the rules of the otherwise heartless IRS and let that business off the hook for its normal financial obligation to the government (and us)?  Motherfuckers!